This is before I got to the clinic, got tied to a bed for treatment and sorted out what happened in Catania in my head. My condition at the moment is worse than ever. I’m having difficulty controlling the motor scooter as I try to leave Yangon as soon as possible. It’s drizzling. The hot, humid air is so dense it seems to interfere with my ability to move forward. On benches, in the doors of stores, inside cars and on the seats of motor scooters, under umbrellas and oilcloths, people sleep, exhausted by the saturated air. Street food vendors follow me with hungry eyes, grubby children play unfamiliar games, jumping through puddles. Heaps of garbage are piled on the roadside, clothes dry strung up on wires, birds cry out. A catastrophe is coming. I ride my motorbike, help to evacuate people. They come out of their homes up to their throats in water. The water is red and viscous. The wave of a huge tsunami rises above the ground: a beautiful symmetrical picture of a bed with a woman in the centre, she’s playing the violin, swaying to the beat of the music. The wave hits and annihilates everything in its path. I fall asleep at the wheel and crash into an ice cream truck parked at the gates of a Buddhist monastery on the outskirts of Bago. For a moment, there’s silence and absolute darkness—a blissful state of silence—one wave has retreated from the shore, while a new one rises overhead, collapsing, crashing against the ground, turning over, breaking to bits, dragging itself across the earth. Ringing in the ears. Nose and mouth clogged with wet dirt. (And ice cream?)

Turns out the young monks love the ice cream man. After lunch, until the morning of the next day, the monks aren’t allowed to eat. They subsist on water, Coca-Cola, and, when they can, ice cream—all you have to do is wait until it melts and is no longer considered food. Clever boys.

They won’t let me die. Isn’t it astounding, Mari, that in this world where there’s so much cruelty, if you just express the desire to die, there will always be someone trying to stop you?